An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

As some of you may have no­ticed by now, I have a fas­ci­na­tion with ceme­ter­ies. That in­ter­est has man­i­fest­ed it­self in my book, Walk­ing with the An­ces­tors–The His­toric Ceme­ter­ies of Trinidad, which was pub­lished in 2014 and doc­u­ments the rich his­to­ry of our bur­ial grounds and some of the peo­ple who lie in them. The old­er grave­yards are an in­valu­able repos­i­to­ry of his­to­ry and they pro­vide a some­what tan­gi­ble con­nec­tion to the founders of our cul­tur­al and eth­nic lega­cy.

Our post-in­de­pen­dence ex­pe­ri­ence and con­di­tion­ing has taught us to de­spise all his­to­ry as be­ing "colo­nial" and the her­itage of "op­pres­sors" with pale skins. The in­evitable state of af­fairs re­sult­ing from this pre­vail­ing men­tal­i­ty has been the swift de­struc­tion of our an­thro­po­log­i­cal arte­facts, rang­ing from the or­nate ar­chi­tec­tur­al gems to doc­u­ments, pho­tos and books.

His­toric ceme­ter­ies have suf­fered the ne­glect of the decades. Na­tion­al pol­i­cy dic­tates that a grave may be reused every eight or ten years, so that in­evitable over­crowd­ing has seen old­er mon­u­ments be­ing de­stroyed to make way for new buri­als.

There is, how­ev­er, an­oth­er more rapid­ly de­vel­op­ing and wor­ry­ing trend afoot which is the oblit­er­a­tion of his­tor­i­cal­ly im­por­tant graves for their wrought iron el­e­ments.

Van­dal­ism in ceme­ter­ies is noth­ing new. In 1911 the Port-of-Spain Gazette re­port­ed that mau­soleums and vaults at Lapey­rouse were be­ing bro­ken in­to and robbed. Jaw­bones were be­ing smashed for their gold den­tures and even skulls were stolen and be­ing sold to obeah prac­ti­tion­ers for five dol­lars apiece. The bronze medal­lion erect­ed to the mem­o­ry of Dr J G B Siegert (of An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters fame) was al­so stolen for its met­al.

With­in re­cent times, how­ev­er, with the in­sa­tiable de­mand for scrap met­al, every­thing from old cars to wa­ter mains have be­come tar­gets for scrap­pers. Ceme­ter­ies have not been spared.

Dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry and up to the 1920s, heavy cast iron en­clo­sures were pop­u­lar for fam­i­lies that could af­ford sump­tu­ous memo­ri­als for their dead. These fences were im­port­ed di­rect­ly from France or Eng­land via mail-or­der or were avail­able from ear­ly fu­ner­al hab­er­dash­ers like J Haynes Clark liv­ery sta­bles. A wide va­ri­ety of pat­terns was avail­able rang­ing from el­e­gant French curves to cast­ings de­pict­ing clas­si­cal themes. These have since be­come ex­am­ples of the art of the met­al­lur­gist but the num­ber is de­creas­ing every day.

At the 1868 Par­adise Ceme­tery in San Fer­nan­do, the com­plete rail­ing sur­round­ing the grave of Canon Ho­r­a­tio Nel­son Hug­gins, one of the most in­flu­en­tial and re­spect­ed cler­gy­men in the dis­trict who died in 1895, has been stolen and al­leged­ly now adorns a house.

The prob­lem is far worse and ac­cel­er­at­ed at Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery in Port-of-Spain, where with­in the space of a few months, sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant sites have been heav­i­ly de­faced. Some of the iron has been mere­ly cut away with hack­saw blades but in oth­er cas­es, they have been bru­tal­ly root­ed out from the con­crete and stone abut­ments in which they are moored.

These are ru­ined along with the mar­ble and lead­en epi­taphs which record the ex­is­tence of the peo­ple who lie in those graves. The des­e­crat­ed rest­ing places are nu­mer­ous.

The graves of some promi­nent peo­ple have been al­most de­stroyed–William H Burn­ley of Or­ange Grove (d.1850), the rich­est man in the colony in his time, the mag­nif­i­cent, goth­ic Blanc Tru­i­jil­lo vault and the Blasi­ni tomb.

On my most re­cent walk through Lapey­rouse, I came across a for­lorn tomb. I had seen it be­fore but now on­ly a frag­ment of its once dec­o­ra­tive cast iron pal­ing re­mains. In their haste to rob the dead, the scrap­pers have de­stroyed the grave com­plete­ly, down to the mar­ble slab which once bore in­scrip­tions to mem­bers of the Dyett fam­i­ly, writ­ten in French. Now, on­ly one sur­vives be­cause it is en­graved on the sin­gle largest frag­ment of the tomb­stone that re­mains. Sur­mount­ed by re­lief im­ages of doves, it reads "ICI RE­POSE ELIZA DYETT, MORT LE 24 OC­TO­BRE 1874"

The oblit­er­a­tion of these grave­stones and their con­tin­ued van­dal­ism, robs present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of a vi­tal her­itage re­source.

We live in a coun­try where few pub­lic records are prop­er­ly pre­served and these colo­nial era graves some­times are all that re­main as ev­i­dence that our an­ces­tors ex­ist­ed. Most of the clans who should have tak­en nat­ur­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their up­keep are ei­ther ex­tinct in the is­land or else have lost touch with their her­itage and thus, their an­ces­tors' dust is rel­e­gat­ed to the care of lo­cal gov­ern­ment agen­cies which even less so ap­pre­ci­ate the true val­ue of our ceme­ter­ies.